More Book Launch Plans

                                                   Please click this link for author information

My book launch for my new mystery novel A Killer Whisky is less than two weeks away. I've spent the past month on preparation, and there's still plenty to do. 

An easy task was to create a Facebook Event Page and invite about 160 Facebook friends who live in the Calgary area. So far, nine have said they're going. This might not seem like a lot, but some will bring a friend, not all attendees confirm, and part of the purpose is to let people know my new book is available. I drop into the Event Page daily and make occasional comments to generate interest. One friend told me my Event Page shows up regularly on his Facebook feed, possibly because he presses "like" whenever the page appears. From other "likes" to the page, I notice that friends I didn't invite have seen it. Thus, the page becomes continuous promotion for relatively little effort on my part.  

For friends who aren't active on Facebook, I created a poster that I email to them individually. This takes more time than a mass mailout, but I think the personal approach prompts more people come. People usually reply, whether they can go or not, and it's fun to catch up with those I haven't seen in months or longer. I contact everyone who's shown an interest in my writing and especially those who have attended previous launches. It helps to keep an attendance list and look back at previous launch pictures.  

In addition, I've sent notices about the launch to my writing groups for inclusion in their weekly or monthly newsletters to members. Few people will attend as a result of these announcements, but some might buy the book and read it if it strikes them as interesting. 

I've also started work on the launch program, which will centre on my PowerPoint presentation. I enjoying doing PowerPoints and work hard to find the right image or bullet points to compliment what I want to say. My talk will focus on my inspirations for writing A Killer Whisky, setting locations in Calgary, and the novel's historical background - the story takes place during the 1918 Flu Pandemic, World War One, and Alberta Prohibition. I still need to create more slides and tweak existing ones to make the newspaper headlines, advertisements, photographs, and cartoons more effective. 

A week before the launch, I'll get a dress rehearsal for the PowerPoint presentation at the Pincher Creek Municipal Library, where I'll discuss the historical events relevant to an audience in Southern Alberta. Both the Pincher Creek Author Talk and Calgary Book Launch will include readings from the novel, which I still have to select, practice, and fit into the program.  

Other ingredients for the book launch event are food and drink. Since "whisky" is in the novel's title and plays a key role in the story, I've pursued my idea of serving "wee drams" of whisky and whisky cocktails named for the story's characters. A few weeks ago, I knew little about whisky cocktails other than that I'd liked Whisky Sours when I was younger. From the internet I've now learned about bitters, muddlers, and channel knives for making lemon twists, and I've found cocktail recipes that my husband and I are experimenting with this week. Our first attempt was a success! Cinnamon Maple Whisky Sour will be the signature drink for my protagonist Katharine, a Canadian patriot who supported the Great War.  

Between now and the launch on March 25th, I'll need to shop for snack platters, lemons for my mixers and twists, and door prizes related to the book. I still need to finalize arrangements with my bookseller, Owl's Nest Bookstore. No doubt myriad details requiring attention will come up. Let's hope for no last-minute disasters, like a snowstorm - not unusual for Calgary in March - or a key person like me coming down with the flu.  

Is the book launch worth all this time, effort, money, and stress?

I don't know. 

But it is fun to plan a party. 

Cheers to everyone who loves writing and reading books! 

        

Old Fashioned - our second cocktail experiment 

     

 

Growing a Short Story to a Novel

 

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Last fall I wrote a historical mystery short story and showed the first four pages to a local Writer-in-Residence. The WIR's main advice was to turn the story into a novel. I had no clue how I'd do this and she didn't offer suggestions, but I was intrigued by the idea. 

Then this spring BWL decided to publish a collection of Canadian Historical Mysteries. They assigned thirteen of their authors to write a novel set in a specific Canadian province or territory. The collection will have twelve books -- British Columbia is co-authored and Nunavut/Northwest Territories will be reunited in one of the books. I'm delighted to represent my home province of Alberta. 

BWL asked us to provide a working title and novel blurb, which they'll publish in a free guidebook as advance promotion. This got me mulling ways to expand my short story, which was set in Calgary during the 1918 influenza pandemic and told through the viewpoint of a police detective. The WIR's other suggestion was to change the protagonist to a character who was present at the victim's death, to make that aspect of the story more immediate. One of the suspects appealed to me as a point-of-view narrator, but if I let readers enter his thoughts I'd lose him as a suspect. Also, while I like experimenting with male protagonists in short stories, I prefer to write female protagonists for novel-length works. This led to my idea for a new character and protagonist, the sister of that suspect. She will be motivated to solve the crime to know if her brother or someone close to him is guilty of murder. 

I plan to keep my detective as a secondary narrator. His investigations and personal story will add many pages to the book. In the short story, he had a romantic interest in a co-worker. For the novel I'll shift his interest to my heroine to enhance their relationship. She's married, but her husband has been overseas for four years, fighting in The Great War, and she's changed during that time. Her feelings for the detective will create lots of conflict for them both. 

My other idea is to create a new suspect for this longer story; a man who opposes the war. The victim and my heroine's brother are injured veterans, who received early discharges. WWI officially ended November 11, 1918, in the middle of the second and deadliest wave of the influenza pandemic, but most of the Canadian troops didn't return until the following spring. I'd like to make the war more present in the novel than it was in the short story, from the perspectives of those on the home front. 

I'm satisfied these additions and changes will be enough to expand my 4,500 word short story to a 75,000 word novel, the median length of the books in the collection. More importantly, I'm eager to write the larger story to develop these characters and find out what happens to them in the new version. 

In effect, the short story is my novel outline. I'm sure much will change in the process of writing the book. Even whodunnit and why the person done it and how he or she done it are up for grabs. So if you read the short story, don't worry about spoilers.  After I showed the WIR those first pages, the short story was accepted for publication. It appears in the recently released Cold Canadian Crime Anthology, available on Amazon, Kobo, and other sites.

 

A new title will be one definite change for the novel. My short story title "A Deadly Flu" was a wink at my first novel, A Deadly Fall. Two similar novel titles would create confusion. 

Here's the cover for the Canadian Historical Mysteries guidebook, which you will soon be able to download for free to read the twelve novel descriptions. 

                For updates, check out the BWL Canadian Historical Mysteries Page

   

 

My Short Stab at Historical Fiction by Susan Calder

 

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One thing I like about writing short stories is the chance to explore genres and characters different from those of my novels. Last fall I completed my first work of historical fiction, a 4,500-word story set during the 1918 influenza pandemic. A Deadly Flu is also my first short whodunit and my first police procedural. I've featured detectives in secondary roles before, but not as story protagonists. 

My idea for A Deadly Flu took root almost two years ago, when the COVID-19 pandemic revived my interest in that earlier virus, which was inaccurately called the Spanish flu. I first heard about the 1918 pandemic on an episode of the 1970s television show, Upstairs Downstairs, when the young wife of the wealthy Bellamy family's son developed a fever and died the same day. 

 During the summer of 2020, I read books and articles about the 1918 pandemic and was struck by its relevance a hundred years later. The prime advice in both pandemics was the same: wash your hands, social distance and avoid crowds. The 1918 Pandemic's second and mostly deadly wave struck my home city of Calgary from October to December 1918. Business, churches and bars closed. People wore masks and lived in fear. 

 Around this time, I was mulling ideas for my fourth mystery novel, to be set during our current pandemic, and wondered if the 1918 flu might provide a parallel backstory. I got the idea of a pharmacist who murders her lover by pouring a medicine that mimicked the 1918 flu's symptoms into his whisky. When he died, the medical profession’s tunnel vision assumed this was another influenza death.

I began writing the backstory as a suspense from the killer’s viewpoint and enjoyed researching Calgary neighbourhoods of the time, along with its streetcar system, fashion, and particulars of the city-wide lockdown. But by the end of the draft, I realized my long ago story wouldn't add enough interest to the contemporary mystery I had in mind. I set the backstory aside and plunged into the current novel. 

                                               Nov 11, 1918 - Calgary WWI Victory parade 

Then the Crime Writers of Canada put out a call for submissions for its 40^th anniversary anthology. Stories had to be set in Canada, feature 'cold' in some way, and be under 5,000 words. I hauled out the backstory and set it during a Calgary cold wave in December 1918, with a detective, rather than a villain, protagonist. A benefit of writing a detective from the early twentieth century is that I didn't have to know about DNA, data bases, and other modern police gadgetry. Since I only had a short space to establish reader connection with my protagonist, I gave him a wound--his wife had died a year earlier in childbirth--and developed a romantic subplot.   

I wrote the story, sent it off, and was thrilled last month to learn A Deadly Flu will be included in the Cold Canadian Crime Anthology, to be released this May. Meanwhile I've been working on my novel-in-progress. Inspired by my historical detective, for the first time in a novel I’m including the viewpoints of two detectives in addition to my insurance adjuster sleuth. I foresee much research into modern police work. One day soon, I’d like to write a historical novel and, perhaps, develop A Deadly Flu into a novella, a genre I haven't tried. That’s another thing I like about writing short stories—they can be stepping stones to future books.